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The business world changes quickly, the digital world even quicker. The problem is that very few business are really keeping up with the pace of change online and the rapid adoption of new media, device and applications by their customers.

The truth is that there are now very few industries unaffected by the web. Whole new business models are emerging daily that totally interrupt entire industries. If it hasn’t happened to you yet it will soon.

In 2012 the need to adapt will be more crucial than ever. Those that do will benefit and see their market share grow or uncover new markets. Those that don’t risk falling well behind or losing it all.

Here are the 9 things your business must do now:

1. Get serious about online

It seems amazing to be writing this in 2012, but there are still many business owners and marketers who don’t appreciate how much the internet is changing their industries. Most have “ticked the box” by slapping together a website but have since done little more.

Newsflash: your customers start their search for a product or service online (including mobile). They want the best information available immediately. If they can purchase or inquire online, they will. If they need to physically visit your location to do business with you then, 1. you better hope your competitors are in the same boat, 2. you must give them enough information online to ensure they make it to your fine establishment, or your competitors will.

Your bog-standard website won’t do the trick anymore. Unless you get really serious about online and make it central to your plans you can start considering new career options.

2. Get good at producing content

Potential customers aren’t looking for you, they’re looking for answers and solutions. They don’t Google “Acme Fasteners”, they search for “best fasteners in Smithtown” or “how to find the best fastener”.

Potential customers also trust the word-of-mouth effect of social media and are more likely to visit a site recommended to them by a “friend” online.

The key to all this is producing good content.

Good content offers solutions. It’s helpful and useful. Its not about your business, its about your customer’s potential needs. Good content gets shared online. It becomes popular. It tends to ranks higher in search results. It speaks to the customer.

You need to produce good content on your website on a regular basis. Static websites don’t deliver business.

3. Get social

Still think social networks are for kids and geeks? Think again. Social networking has become ubiquitous and increasingly seamless. The most exciting start-ups are around social networking ideas that are interrupting old business models.

People like to share good information. They like to share ideas and discoveries. They like to share information about themselves. Social networks have made it easier than ever to share information at the click of a button.

Facebook is closing in on 1 billion users. Google+ is only 6 months old and is on track to hit 100 users in February 2012. Twitter has an estimated 300+ million users. Then there is LinkedIn and numerous other networks.

At the very least you should enable sharing buttons (like the ones at the top of this post) on your website so that visitors can easily share that great content you are hopefully producing. You don’t even need to be a member of these networks but you should be catering to those visitors who are.

To really get social you need to set up accounts and dedicated pages for your business with the Big Four: Facebook, Twitter. LinkedIn and Google+. Then you have to work those accounts. There’s no escaping this, it has to be done.

The upside of getting social are significant. The downside of not getting social is also significant, but more painful.

4. Get optimised

Being found online in search engines is not just a luxury, its a necessity in 2012. At a time when 97% of people begin their online search for a product or service using a search engine its incredible that 87% of business websites are poorly optimised for search. You need to immediately start optimising multiple pages of your website for important industry search terms; the more they address needs and solutions the better (see Get Content). This is one action could make the biggest difference to your business and give you a significant advantage over your competitors.

Test your website’s optimisation here.

5. Get data

Never in history has more customer data been more freely available. A clever online strategy can tell you so much about your market, your customer needs, your customers habits and your potential customer’s details. Website analytics, social media analytics, conversion forms and more can all work in unison to help you improve the marketing accuracy of your business. Simple conversion forms on your website can help you build a sizable and relevant database.

6. Get converted

Attracting traffic to your website is nice, but converting that traffic into fans, inquiries and sales is even nicer. PDF downloads, newsletter subscriptions, inquiry forms, free trials….these can all work to help turn visitors into customers. But it only happens if you provide the right call-to-action. What are you doing to convert your traffic?

7. Get mobile

The smart phone is ubiquitous. The tablet is fast replacing the laptop as the casual computing device. We are now less tethered to a desk and more mobile than ever whilst remaining totally “connected” online. Mobile is expected to account for over 20% of all searches in 2012 and it’ll continue to grow from there.

Then we have social networking which fits so neatly hand-in-glove with mobile devices.

The bottom line is that you have to pay serious consideration to how you business will compete with the growth of the mobile consumer. Is your website mobile friendly? Should you build apps? Is there a particular aspect of you business that is more suited to mobile that you can build upon?

8. Get inbound

All of these above points add up to an Inbound Marketing strategy. Inbound is about attracting visitors and converting them to customers rather than the old advertising approach of blasting everyone with the hope of hitting some potentially interested buyers. Inbound leads to higher conversion rates and better use of your marketing budget. The more you think “inbound”, the more you will be acting like a modern web marketer.

9. Get dedicated

Smart, modern online marketing isn’t a set and forget exercise. Its not something to give to the junior to take care of “because they use Facebook”. Your online strategy requires a dedicated approach and dedicated resources. We have been increasingly helping our clients recruit and train marketers who are working full-time on online marketing strategies. There’s a lot to look after: numerous social networks, generating great content, tracking conversion and implementing mobile solutions.

The businesses who decide dedicate adequate resources to online are those who will prosper.

Last night at The New Lunaticks first Digital Showcase event we were proud to unveil our newest version of NLYZR: Page Optimizer.

NLYZR: Page Optimizer is a fast, efficient tool that helps you optimize any page of your website for a nominated search term. It totally demystifies the often confusing language and practices of search engine optimisation with straight-forward, easy-to-understand reporting and recommendations.

Its an extension of the original Free NLYZR service we have been offering over the last two years and was created using the knowledge we have gained from testing the SEO capabilities of thousands of websites.

We believe NLYZR: Page Optimizer takes SEO out of the IT department and allows marketers and business owners to determine exactly what they need for SEO success. It’s SEO best-practice made easy.

NLYZR: Page Optimizer will be a paid service which we intend to launch soon.

FREE TRIAL

We’d like to test NLYZR: Page Optimizer with a few more sites prior to the official launch in order to receive feedback and help with the fine-tuning.

If you were at The New Lunaticks last night and would like a FREE TRIAL for the rest of May 2011 then here’s your chance. You’ll be able to test and optimize as many pages of your website as you’d like until the end of the month, all we ask in return is your feedback and maybe some testimonials for good results.

The first 10 companies / people who email me will be eligible for the Free Trial. We reserve the right to decline competitors or those with sites we believe would not benefit from this system.

Email: craig@stickyads.com.au

Subject Line: NLYZR: Page Optimizer Trial

Include all relevant contact details and the URL for website you’d be using it for.

VIDEO: if you’d like to watch the presentation and explanation of NLYZR: Page Optimizer from the Lunaticks event then click here. It starts at 1 hour and 15 mins into video and lasts around 14 mins. Picture quality is a bit grainy as it was from the webcast. Thanks to Lunaticks Society of Newcastle for the event and video.

We have speculated for a while now that Google and Bing were starting to give more weight to Twitter and Facebook links as they move towards providing the most relevant and real-time search results. In fact, at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco last November the Bing team acknowledged that social signals were becoming increasingly influential.

Now this is being confirmed officially by Google and Bing. Leading search engine blog Search Engine Land conducted an interview with Bing and Google recently to discuss how social signals are being measured. This is fantastic news for inbound marketing.

Here is an excerpt:

1) If an article is retweeted or referenced much in Twitter, do you count that as a signal outside of finding any non-nofollowed links that may naturally result from it?

Bing: We do look at the social authority of a user. We look at how many people you follow, how many follow you, and this can add a little weight to a listing in regular search results. It carries much more weight in Bing Social Search, where tweets from more authoritative people will flow to the top when best match relevancy is used.

Google: Yes, we do use it as a signal. It is used as a signal in our organic and news rankings. We also use it to enhance our news universal by marking how many people shared an article.

2) Do you try to calculate the authority of someone who tweets that might be assigned to their Twitter page. Do you try to “know,” if you will, who they are?

Bing: Yes. We do calculate the authority of someone who tweets. For known public figures or publishers, we do associate them with who they are. (For example, query for Danny Sullivan)

Google: Yes we do compute and use author quality. We don’t know who anyone is in real life

3) Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who tweets it?

Bing: Yes.

Google: Yes we do use this as a signal, especially in the “Top links” section [of Google Realtime Search]. Author authority is independent of PageRank, but it is currently only used in limited situations in ordinary web search.

4) Do you track links shared within Facebook, either through personal walls or fan pages?

Bing: Yes. We look at links shared that are marked as “Everyone,” and links shared from Facebook fan pages.

Google: We treat links shared on Facebook fan pages the same as we treat tweeted links. We have no personal wall data from Facebook.

5) Do you try to calculate the authority of someone on Facebook, either say via their personal wall or their fan page.

Bing: We don’t do this on Facebook. On Facebook, we only get what’s public, only updates and things you’ve posted to everyone as viewable. We don’t get things only shared with friends, so we don’t know how authoritative you are on Facebook. There isn’t the whole convenient retweet mechanism we see on Twitter.

We do see valuable content shared by Facebook users, even though we only get what’s public.  For example when Gary Coleman died we saw a  video from Different Strokes, saying his favorite line “what ya talk’in ’bout Willis” gain popularity.  It happened to be what a lot of people are sharing on the day he passed away.

Google: Again, the treatment is the same as for Twitter. And we have no personal wall data from Facebook.

6) Do you calculate whether a link should carry more weight depending on the person who shared it on Facebook?

Bing: We can tell if something is of quality on Facbook by leveraging Twitter. If the same link is shared in both places, it’s more likely to be legitimate.

Google: Same as question 5.

7) And just to be really clear, the new Facebook data is not yet being used in ordinary web search, right? (asked only of Bing, because it was only relevant to them)

No.

end of interview.

The point here for business is that you now have yet another reason to start getting active with social media. The web is becoming increasingly “social” and buzz and engagement are becoming valuable metrics. Not only can you drive traffic to your site from Twitter and Facebook, you can increase Google traffic to your site by using Twitter and Facebook.

So what are you waiting for? Do an audit of your social media presence and develop a sound plan to make Twitter and Facebook an integral part of your future marketing.

This week NLYZR assesses the websites of 27 Storage & Document Management companies, a list originally published in BRW.

We have used the all new NLYZR for this list. NLYZR assesses a website’s Search Engine Optimisation using criteria such as On-page SEO, Off-page SEO and a Keyword search result.

These are crucial aspects of Inbound Marketing and Internet Marketing Strategies.

Let’s see how they rank!

88/100 Archive Security

84/100 National Storage

79/100 Guardian Storage

79/100 Strata Storage

76/100 Winevault

75/100 Cellarit

74/100 Big Box Self Storage

71/100 Recall

71/100 Rent-A-Space

69/100 Containaway

69/100 FileSaver

66/100 Safe ‘n’ Sound Self Storage

65/100 U-Store-It

59/100 Fort Knox Self Storage

59/100 Fry’s Self Storage

59/100 Total Records Management

58/100 Hi-Tech Self Storage

54/100 Wine-Ark

53/100 Grace Self Storage

52/100 ezyselfstorage

52/100 Kennards Self Storage

51/100 Spare Room Self Storage

49/100 Koala Self Storage

49/100 Lenko

49/100 SecureDoc Information Services

48/100 Storage King

48/100 StorageWorks

Web NLYZR is a FREE website analysis tool that assesses your website’s overall search engine optimisation and nominated keyword search performance. Hundreds of companies use it as a starting point for improving their online performance every week.

Sticky have developed and documented a formal process for effective Inbound Marketing that results in high search engine rankings, increased traffic, quality leads and conversion to sales. NLYZR provides the measurements and recommendations to support this process. Any business that follows the process and recommendations is ensured of success.

If you’d like to improve your website’s search rankings please CONTACT US.

The launch of Google Instant promises to be extremely beneficial for inbound marketing.

Google Instant is great for inbound marketing

Google recently announced the launch of Google Instant, a new interface that uses predictive technology to allow users to search as they type. Results appear in real-time as users type in their queries, adjusting with every new word or letter.

Google claim the benefits to be:

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Several commentators claim that Instant will be the death of SEO, while Google executives and many others disagree.

One thing is certain though…..Google Instant is fantastic for inbound marketers.

The more intimate search interface will encourage users to use longer keyword phrases as they fine-tune their searches. This is perfect for inbound marketers who publish regular and relevant content addressing the needs of their prospective customers.

Google Instant will also decrease the need for users to click through to the 2nd and 3rd page of search results as the refined results will keep changing on Page One.

And this is why proper search engine optimisation will still be crucial and why SEO is an important part of the inbound marketing equation. Every post and and every page of your site has the potential to be found on the first page of search. The more content you publish, the more search opportunities you will have.

However content alone isn’t enough. It has to be optimised properly for search too. We still maintain that you need to look at the Code, Content and Connections for thorough SEO, otherwise Google won’t be sending you the traffic you deserve.

Google Instant is probably bad news for the traditional SEO’s who rely mainly on link-building for one or two pages and broad search terms.

Relevance is in. User engagement is in. Quality content is in. These should all result in a more satisfying experience for users and therefore even more reliance on search.

These are perfect conditions for inbound marketing.

Find our how inbound marketing turns websites into customer magnets

In the spirit of the federal election we thought we’d check out the websites of Australia’s political parties and see how well they compared on NLYZR.

After seeing the results, we hope they run the country better than their websites.

As a matter of interest we grabbed the keywords from each site’s meta data to show what they wanted to be found for in search. Its quite telling.

Here’s how they stacked up:

ALP

www.alp.org.au

Keywords: Australian Labor, Australian Labor Party, Julia Gillard, ALP

Summary: Labor are “Moving Forward” the most with a reasonably well-optimised site that benefits from very good PageRank

Score: 86/100

Liberal Party

www.liberal.org.au

Keywords: Liberal Party homepage,Liberal Australia,Tony Abbott,Emissions Trading Scheme,ETS

Summary: Need some “Real Action” to improve the site some more

Score: 76/100

The Greens

greens.org.au

Keywords: australian greens, australia, greens, politics, federal election, policy, environment, ecology, sustainability, peace, non violence, disarmament, social justice, economic justice, grassroots democracy

Summary: The most progressive site here but lacking the power of major party PageRank

Score: 83/100

The Nationals

www.nationals.org.au

Keywords: Australia, Nationals, Liberal, election, policy, policies, government, Australian, Canberra, Federal, National, Party, Political, National Party, John Anderson, Anderson, Nats, nats, deputy pm, deputy, NSW, VIC, WA, QLD, TAS, SA, NT, ACT, New, South, Wales, Victoria, Western, Australian, Capital, Territory

Summary: A PageRank of 1 means that this site seriously under performs and are behind the rest of the herd.

Score: 64/100

Family First

www.familyfirst.org.au

Keywords: none found

Summary: need some divine SEO intervention to be found with such poor meta data.

Score: 68/100

Australian Sex party

www.sexparty.org.au

Keywords: none

Summary: clearly having too much fun to bother about optimising their site but seems to be attracting plenty of traffic

Score: 66

StickySpace: premium web hosting, blinding speed

We are proud to announce the launch of our new premium web hosting service StickySpace.

StickySpace has been created in response to overwhelming client demand for a high-speed premium web hosting with great customer service.

It is also a direct response to the need for better site-speed to keep up with the latest search engine optimisation criteria. Google has made plenty of noise in the last year about how site speed is now a factor in search rankings, so we feel it is crucial that we ensure our clients are not penalised by the slow hosting speeds offered by many hosting companies.

StickySpace offers:

• Reliable Service

• Premium Hosting

• Blistering Speeds

• Massive traffic allowance

• Huge amounts of space

StickySpace completes the full web / SEO service from Sticky. Clients can now source their website build, search engine optimisation, inbound marketing strategy and web hosting from one supplier. The result should be better results, better traffic and better conversion rates.

If you are sick of the hosting run-around and want to step up to premium web hosting then take a look at StickySpace.

An SEO specialist can help

Have you considered hiring a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO ) specialist? If you are an Australian corporate marketer trawling through this website you will find plenty of reasons why it is crucial for your organisation to take web marketing and SEO seriously.

For example:

• The Internet is now the most consumed media in Australia. The average Australian spends 16.1 hours per week online according to the 2009 Nielsen Annual Internet & Technology report. (You can see the other media here).

• First place in organic search receives around 42% click-through rate. This is compared to around 11% click-through for 2nd place and 3% for 10th place.

• Even Fortune 500 companies fail at search engine optimization, and many still don’t link paid-search keywords to SEO campaigns, although they collectively spend about $3.4 million daily on 97,559 keywords, according to a report.

The problem is, that this is so important to your business that it is also crucial that you obtain the right advice and assistance. Your web designer probably doesn’t understand web marketing and SEO and its not realistic for corporate marketers to keep up to date with all the latest SEO information and techniques.

So here are 6 reasons why you might need to hire a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) specialist:

1. You have too much to do and too little time to do it. Good SEO takes a lot of time, is it the best use of yours?

2. A fresh set of eyes. You probably stare at your website too much as it is and are possibly now blind to potential issues. An SEO specialist brings afresh set of eyes to the site with a single-minded view to improve your search results.

3. True expertise. Many people working around the web industry say they understand SEO but to be fair in most cases their knowledge is basic. SEO evolve on a daily basis and is increasingly complicated. You need a specialist who is up-to-date with the very latest SEO strategies and tools.

4. Overcome internal politics. There can be a a lot of parties with vested interests in your website, all clamouring for your attention or priority. An SEO specialist can present the FACTS and an unbiased strategy to achieve everyone’s goals in the RIGHT order.

5. Education. You and your team can learn more about SEO from a specialist, that will improve your knowledge and value to the organisation as well assist in communicating why and what needs to be done. A good SEO explain “why” and “how” as well as performing the tasks at hand.

6. Better results. Unless you are a gun at SEO then a specialist will most likely produce better and faster search results than you could achieve on your own. This is good for your company and good for you.

Let’s face it, excellent search results can be invaluable to your organisation. These days it could be amongst the most productive marketing you undertake. But achieving great results is not easy unless you are living and breathing SEO every day. Hiring an SEO specialist is definitely worth exploring.

Of course, that’s where we’d like to help. If you are an Australian corporate marketer then Sticky might be able to help you achieve better search results. Feel free to test your site with our Web NLYZR or to contact us to discuss your needs.

Blogging is an important part of Inbound Marketing

Forget the standard web template approach that most businesses employ, if your organisation wants to generate meaningful, engaged visitors then you should incorporate a blog into your website. Its a significant element of our Inbound Marketing philosophy.

Most corporate websites look fairly similar. There’s been a group-think mentality that your site should all be contained in the one screen, with content not falling “below the fold”. You see the same logo position, same navigation and the same bland corporate information.

What you don’t often see is regularly updated information that is both helpful and relevant to your target audience.

That’s where a blog can become extremely valuable to your organisation. Here are 6 reasons why one should be incorporated into your web presence.

1. A blog keeps your visitors interested. The more regularly you update your website with quality information, the more likely visitors are to return. Otherwise they can just visit once and then move on, quickly forgetting about you.

2. Visitors can actually show loyalty to a website by subscribing to your RSS feed or updates by email. The more interesting and helpful your information is, the more likely it is you will grow a base of subscribers. These regularly engaged visitors can be an extremely valuable asset and are obviously more likely to become customers over time.

3. A blog post is more likely to be shared or passed onto others than a normal web page. If you are generating useful content and have included social media sharing devices such as a Facebook “Share” button, a Twitter “ReTweet” button or a Digg prompt, there is a good chance visitors will share your information with others. This immediately broadens your audience and can boost your traffic. your audience can become your distribution network. Even if your organisation is not heavily engaged in Social Media it can benefit from those who are.

4. Search engines love blogs. Every blog post is another piece of content for Google, Bing and Yahoo etc to index, and its another potential slot in the search results that can deliver more traffic to your website. In fact, Google’s latest algorithm changes seem to be favouring fresh, relevant content so if your website is sitting there unchanged month after month you are likely to be overtaken by your competitors who are posting regularly. Even if you don’t have a sophisticated SEO strategy, simply posting regular content will go a long way to building your online success.

5. Most websites are limited by the design and pages in the websites they launch. Once the initial content has been uploaded the site is left to age. New content means design hassles, additional expense and problems. But if you built your site with a blog mentality the limitations are removed. You can add as much new information as you desire. In fact, the blog demands your attention and will keep your organisation more focused on driving your site onto bigger and better things.

6. Blogging is thinking. The discipline of blogging about your industry and organisationand creating new content can lead to great insight. It forces you to constantly consider why your organisation exists and how it can benefit others. Sometimes that “light bulb” moment can come whilst writing a thoughtful blog post.

We urge most organisations to add a blog to their online presence and have seen wonderful results from those who have embraced it. So move away from the old-fashioned corporate web templates and incorporate a more dynamic approach to your website.

For another take on how to blog successfully, watch this great presentation by Jason Fried called Marketing by Sharing

Paintball supplier wants to hit search targets

We came across a job advertisement today placed by a Paintball supplier based in Australia who is looking to hire an SEO specialist. In fact, the company is the world’s largest Paintball provider and their office is near ours in Wickham.

The advertisement explains that this is a hands on position that includes activities such as keyword analysis, SEO and  Social Media campaigns and link building.

Its fantastic to see more local businesses beginning to take search engine optimisation seriously, but what this advertisement also illustrates is the general lack of knowledge in the marketplace about SEO.

We used our NLYZR tool to study the leading Paintball suppliers based upon their Google rankings and it was soon evident that this is an industry that has paid little attention to search engine optimisation. The number one ranked site on Google received an NLYZR score of just 45/100 and has NO Google PageRank.

So here is our pitch to Paintball suppliers and any other business looking to hire a full-time SEO specialist – get some independent advice first. There’s no need to hire a full-time employee to achieve the search results you desire. A professional SEO and Inbound Marketing firm, such as Sticky, could quickly whip your website into shape and have you achieving outstanding search results. Even better, we’d map out a strategy that ensures that you turn your new traffic into sales not just hits. Our Inbound Marketing approach turns websites into customer magnets.

Sticky is trusted by leading organisations such as Colliers International, Australian Cancer Research Foundation, Promax (currently under construction), and World Society Protection for Animals to manage their SEO strategies. We could easily help a leading Paintball supplier to hit their targets.

Note: this post was done as an SEO test. We regularly use our sites to test different search markets.